55 years ago today, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. We all continue to be inspired by his life example, readings, and writings. His most famous quote on health care is: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.”
Several key health care proposals we are pushing to include in this year’s final New York State budget deal will help advance health equity:
- Expand public health insurance coverage for ALL low-income immigrants (“Coverage for All Act”).
- Eliminate asset tests for low-income people on Medicare who apply for Medicaid wrap-around coverage.
- Improve and streamline state-funded hospital financial assistance programs to prevent patients from incurring unnecessary medical debt (“Ounce of Prevention Act”).
- Ban health care providers and debt collection agencies from reporting patient medical debt to credit rating agencies (“Fair Medical Debt Reporting Act”).
- Redirect indigent care pool funding to safety-net hospitals that serve large numbers of low-income patients on public insurance programs or who are uninsured.
- Increase salaries of home and community-based long-term care workers to recruit and retain a sufficient and quality workforce (“Fair Pay for Home Care”).
Beyond health care issues per se, we are also pushing for:
- Full funding for the New York’s new public campaign finance program, to limit #BigDonor and special interest money in our elections, and strengthen constituent small donors to improve grassroots-driven democracy (“Fair Elections for New York”)
- Ending decades of sweetheart tax deals given to large corporations, special interests, and the ultra-rich, by requiring them to “pay what they owe” and “pay their fair share” of taxes (“Invest in Our New York” package).
We won’t get to true universal health care without these vital election and tax reforms!
Thank you for all your outreach to Gov. Hochul and your state legislators on these issues! They are still alive and on the table in the ongoing budget process because of your advocacy. Your phone calls, emails, and social media posts matter, and they ARE having impact.
Broadly, issue advocates ARE maintaining and gaining ground (slowly-but-surely) in the budget process. Otherwise, a typical insider-only, special interest-driven deal would have already happened. So keep on keepin’ on!
Here’s some online links to easily take action: